Episode 20 | Erika Litzer on Collegiate Swimming, River Guiding, Ski Patrolling and Ultrarunning
by Nikki Parnell — August 14, 2020
This week we talk with fellow Bendite, Erika Litzer, about being a collegiate swimmer, river guide, ski patroller, having major injuries, ultrarunning and the real and raw mom life.
Her evolution to ultrarunning begins in the pool, swimming from when she was young and through a full ride athletic scholarship to Oregon State University. She has a difficult relationship with her swimming career largely because of how her education and life passions were affected by how much time and energy were consumed by swimming. She has a great way of putting into words what it was like to have so many people pulling at her to swim — coaches, teammates, teachers, parents — that it no longer felt like her choice to compete but a call to duty to keep going. By the time she graduated and swam in her last PAC-10 meet she was so burnt out that she got out of the pool and threw her cap and goggles in the trash.
Erika shares a hilarious story of how she spontaneously ended up escaping to Bend, OR to become a river guide in the summer and a ski patroller in the winter and what it’s like to rotate the two careers. She reflects on the similarities between the communities she’s been able to be a part of through the years – the river rats, the patrollers, and now ultrarunners. There’s a closeness through experience, of being part of a team and having your life in each other’s hands while working through serious situations together that really bond her and her people together. And as runners there is a similar closeness as we all have suffered and have had to embrace the suck at times which helps us relate with one another.
Unfortunately, from swimming and white water kayaking Erika acquired a massive shoulder injury and has had major surgery and years of hyper mobility and dislocations. She even dislocated it from sneezing a little too hard once. Her injury has forced her to let go of ski patrolling and she has cut way back on guiding. She describes the depths of how hard those losses are.
But often, from the ashes beauty can be found, right? Cue the running! When it comes to Erika’s running, the relationship starts out as a hate relationship. Not a love hate relationship, just a purely hate one. Erika hates being bad at something and due to her sprinter swimmer background she was always last when running with her team. The long distance running was a new kind of pain but her anger towards running propelled her to keep going, to master this challenge and eventually a flip switched and now she runs ultras. Ha! Running became that mentally and physically healing and fulfilling sport where she could be out in the woods and not looking at the bottom of a pool. She even said, “The satisfaction of finishing tough runs has far outweighed any race I ever did well in, in my swimming career. I think because I wanted it.” Now her life and her sports are her choice and that brings so much more gratification. She has also found our running community and even works at Bend’s FootZone running store.
We talk about triathlons, Erika’s first ultra race experience, and her training and build up to the 2020 Elkhorn Crest 50k. She came into this race off Covid stress running and being overtrained, tired and trying to talk herself out of even toeing the start line. But amidst all that she still showed up and ran strong.
We end with some real life, raw motherhood ranting and talking from the trenches. Erika notes how she’s done all these things in her life (all the badass things I’ve written above) and yet parenting is hands down the hardest, most challenging and rewarding thing she’s done to date. The stark contrast between a day of sweet, happy kids with rainbows and butterflies and the next day of yelling, screaming, kicking and crying is a shocking and wearying thing that we probably won’t ever get used to. There are such highs and lows of real life and since we all struggle we might as well be honest about it and share our good stories right alongside our crappy stories so we can all remember we’re not alone in this lovable, chaotic mess!
This episode may be a long one but it sure is filled with so much goodness! I hope you enjoy it as much as Stef and I did! Click the button below to listen or search “Run Hard Mom Hard” wherever you get your podcasts! Don’t forget to subscribe and share with your running community! Thanks so much!
Show Notes:
Erika’s Favorite Race: Elkhorn Crest 50k
Fave meal: Turkey Trot meatballs and Marathon Lasagna from Run Fast Cook Fast Eat Slow cookbook
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